Some experiences are worth sharing and there is no better way to show a self-driving vehicle than riding in real everyday scenarios. Olli (#meetOlli), an autonomous shuttle performed 3 days of rides for more than 300 guests from all over the world to prove its new capabilities. Thanks to the RoboticResearch partnership with LocalMotors a new software platform and sensor sets have been designed and integrated into Olli.

The experience brought passengers on a ride smoothly, reaching up to 19 Mph, crossing pedestrians and cyclists intersections, with vehicle overtaking and signal recognition. But dynamic obstacles avoidance has been one of the most interesting tests. Every group was asked to move barriers located in the path of the vehicle and based on the software OLLI changed its trajectory each time to determine the safest possible route to drive forward as published in official Local Motors social media feed

The event gathered also a number of partners in fleet management , engineering services, insurance, HMI experience, mapping, operators and financing. It is clearly an entire ecosystem built to support self driving vehicles coming to market and providing all the necessary supporting tools to manage barriers to introduce this new technology.

Autonomous driving is the forefront of mobility and an entire industry will be shaped in the future according to new services, business models and players.

Next step is to bring confidence to the public around autonomous vehicles, deploying vehicles and proving how safe this technology can be. It’s a long way to go to reach fully autonomy but the journey will definitely be exciting. See you on the roads this summer!

We are quite aware that future business model for carmakers is mobility oriented more than car focused. All brands are moving to become miles/km providers, much bigger market than struggling selling cars to dealers and customers.

Weekly news support this future.. but the focus of this post is more about the business side. How to make money in this new shaping industry?

The convergence of electric and autonomous technologies, public regulations, tradeoff between public/private business, integration of fleet management, long-term and short-term rentals are disrupting multiple traditional businesses and shaping a completely new competitive arena where different industries want to play the game.

We see car makers directly moving to mobility (brand like Moia, Maven, IMotion, Moovel, Lynk&co just to mention few ones) or huge public transports operators (Deutsche-Bahn, Transdev, Keolis) extending their offer to ride-sharing pilots, or big rental companies embracing sharing mobility (corporate or privately based) and don’t forget new players often heavily backed (Zoox) or leading forefront giants like Uber or Waymo.

Quite a crowded arena, specially if we consider that none of those players really own the whole stack of services that future business will require. Even more if we understand that final stage of this change will be the coming popular definition “Mobility as a Service” clearly described in this picture by Sampo Hietanen, pioneer entrepreneur running his Maas Global company.

Starting from here I outline some of the most important topics to be considered addressing this market based on assumptions that only few companies will have the resources (money, team, assets) to scale globally and we’ll probably see many providers acting locally followed by an increasing number of M&A.

Full mobility service business case is based on a tailored range of vehicles according to client’s preferences. Vehicles will feature new design (cars/van/minibus/light-freight) with multiple mobility targets. Vehicles will be initially electric and autonomous in a short timeline of period (local deployment according to regulations). In some regions it’s possible to include 2 wheels in the game.

Fleet Financing (leasing/rental) will be a core business because even if we think about the future.. we’ll still need someone to own and rent cars for mobility. At least until we’ll move in 3 dimensions instead of 2 and flying car will hit the road.. (actually the sky) of our cities.

Business operations: the business case includes a broad range of operations: